An important breakthrough in understanding how inflammation is regulated has been made by scientists from Trinity College Dublin. They have just discovered that a key immune alarm protein previously believed to calm down the immune response actually does the opposite.
Their work has numerous potential impacts, especially in the context of understanding and responding to autoimmune disorders and inflammation.
Our immune system serves a very important function in protecting us from infection and injury. However, when immune responses become too aggressive this can lead to damaging inflammation, which occurs in conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis. Inflammation is triggered when our bodies produce “alarm proteins” (interleukins), which ramp up our defenses against infection and injury by switching on different components of our immune system.
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